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This cube icon, it speaks to me

That was the goal

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The Price of American Exceptionalism

The New York Times reported on July 9th that the newly installed head of Voice of America, a critical soft power organ for US foreign policy for nearly 80 years, was strongly considering not extending visas for foreign journalists working at the agency. This decision followed on the heels of ICE’s announcement that foreign students not able to take in-person courses for the upcoming Fall semester would be forced to leave the country.

These decisions taken by themselves are certainly bad, but it is their place in the broader context of four years of self-defeating American policies that make them especially hard to swallow. At a time when the world desperately needs unity and answers, when democracy and freedom are on the backslide around the world, the United States continues to embrace a specious concept of American exceptionalism. It is an impoverished one that confuses weakness and fear for strength. And one that ultimately will do more harm to the country’s standing in the world at a time when it is most needed.

From its earliest days, this administration has repeatedly turned its back on immigrants and traditional allies. Our collective ability to stay focused on one issue has been disoriented by the endless stream of shit that the White House and propaganda machine spews into the ecosystem, but these are just a few that come to mind.

A travel ban from majority-Muslim nations in the first week of the administration; constant undermining of longstanding alliances and partnerships, including those with NATO, South Korea, Japan, and the Kurds; repeatedly cozying up to despotic regimes who actively or have in the past harmed America’s national interest, including Russia, Turkey, China, and North Korea; a family separation policy that caged children and kept them apart from their parents, in the name of ‘deterrence’; scaling down the refugee cap more and more each year, bringing it to its lowest point in several decades; and a temporary suspension of the H1-B visa program.

(A Detention Center at the Southern Border, Key for ‘Deterrence’)

There are probably too many to recount here, too many for me to even recall. But time and again the one defining through line of the Trump Administration has been a rejection of American values and an embrace of things inimical to the American tradition. This has been said many times during this administration and to those steeped in the minutiae of day-to-day policy shifts, it is all too obvious and probably even cliché. But most Americans are not those people, nor are global citizens who look to the United States for guidance. And we shouldn’t lose sight of the incredible damage these four years of Trump governance have done to this country and its place in the world. We are less trusted by allies, less feared by our enemies, and less able to make meaningful change in the world. We cannot accept this new normal; we cannot grow numb.

I am not naïve. I know the United States has not lived up to its ideals in the past, I know that it probably hasn’t even lived up to its ideals for the majority of its existence. But it – and the leaders its people have chosen through the years – at least pretended to care. We have reached the point now, however, where the people in charge do not even pretend.

Unsurprisingly, the administration’s willful negligence has affected the way Americans and the world view the country. A recent Gallup poll conducted in June, for example, found that American pride has fallen to a nearly two decade low, among both Republicans and Democrats. For all the rhetoric about restoring American greatness, it is clear that these past few years of scorched earth governing that tears down rather than builds up has exhausted the American public. Beyond that, though, the rejection of patently American ideals like diversity and inclusion, this time in both word and deed, has likely soured the public on its government and country. 

After all, it’s hard to be proud of a country in which the president praises Neo-Nazis, in which George Floyd and so many other Black Americans can be indiscriminately harassed and murdered by police, and in which inequality has become an even more important fact of life. 

This dynamic can also be seen on the world stage, where trust and respect for the United States have fallen under the current president. Pew conducted a poll in January of this year and found that while confidence in the US has dipped somewhat, faith in its leader is dramatically lower, a product of both the president’s rhetoric and policies as well as democratic erosion here at home. 

These drops are most pronounced among some of the country’s traditional allies, especially European allies, according to the same poll.

Notably, the current president enjoys similar levels of international support to another Republican president this century who used the power of his office to bully allies abroad and citizens at home into adopting a worldview hostile to their own values in the service of American “exceptionalism.” But who has the time for such pettiness?

Leaving aside such comparisons, what is clear is that the United States, the supposed leader of the free world and a global beacon for freedom, has seen itself steadily lose its claim to that mantle over the last four years. And I can hardly imagine a worse time for our credibility as a purveyor of democracy and freedom, however imperfectly we live up to those ideals, than now. Freedom is under assault everywhere.

In Europe, far-right parties continue to make inroads in countries, some we classify as fledgling democracies and others who are democracies. Far right leaders and parties in Hungary and Poland, for example, continue to threaten their status as democracies and wage rhetorical war on minorities like Muslim refugees and Jews, while the AfD in Germany grows more powerful by the year. Part and parcel of this trend, opposition to migration continues to gain strength throughout Europe and empowers these right-wing parties. The US government, needless to say, does little to oppose these trends. Its rhetoric alone I would argue gives tacit support to movements like these that seek to fall back on the crutch of religious or ethnic nationalism. Additionally, it hardly needs mentioning here what the United States’ current policy towards Russia, the greatest threat to democracy in Europe today, is under this administration.

(George Soros, a Popular Target of Anti-Semitic Smears in Hungary)

In the Middle East, a region in which we have waged war for decades and spent trillions of dollars in the name of freedom, we continue to bankroll oil rich Gulf nations who have repeatedly harmed American interests and American citizens, whether through funding extremist activities, waging merciless war against a Yemeni population unable to defend or feed itself, or hampering our foreign policy objectives in the region. Rather than push back against these nations and use the leverage it has, the administration (admittedly, like those before it) allows Saudi Arabia and its partners to dictate the terms of our relationship.

This is to say nothing of Israel, a country with whom we have always had close ties and nevertheless have pushed to make itself a better, more democratic place. Republican and Democratic administrations alike, to varying degrees, have held that a two-state solution is the only way to ensure Israel’s continued existence as both a democratic and Jewish state. More importantly, they have agreed it was the only way to recognize the agency and humanity of the Palestinian population, who exist primarily as second-class citizens. The Trump Administration by contrast gave explicit sanction of the Israeli occupation by agreeing to move its embassy to Jerusalem, a slap in the face to 5 million Palestinians. Rather than be punished for annexation and settlement building, however, the current right-wing Israeli regime was rewarded by the supposed leader of the free world with a gift it has coveted for decades, explicit recognition of its occupation, its settlements, and control over what some consider a semi-apartheid state.

(Israeli Settlements in the West Bank, Illegal but American-Sanctioned)

And in Asia, despite hard-edged rhetoric purporting to represent strength, the US has ceded ground to its number one geopolitical foe and given tacit recognition to North Korea’s nuclear program. Bending over backwards to secure a trade deal he believed would help his reelection efforts, the president has turned a blind eye as China becomes one of the greatest threats to democracy and free expression anywhere in the world.

Getting tough on China apparently looks like giving explicit support to China’s program of “reeducation” of its Uyghur population, or as I call it sending ethnic minorities to work camps in order to practice eugenics upon women and indoctrinate children while depriving them of food and freedom. Getting tough on China also looks like allowing it to eliminate any semblance of freedom in Hong Kong, a global hub of commerce and free expression, with scant repudiation of a dead-of-night passing of a law that punishes any Hong Kong citizen or international traveler who speaks ill of China with threat of imprisonment. Getting tough on China also looks like allowing it to bully and harass its neighbors in the South China Sea with armed piracy and threats of economic or military retaliation, or infringe upon Indian sovereignty with threats of armed conflict.

(An Uyghur Re-Education Camp in Xinjiang, China -- in the 21st Century)

With North Korea the president gave in, as he always does, to flattery and cajoling and turned his back on the longstanding American position regarding North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. In a flashy summit with Kim Jong Un, the president committed the United States to formally ending the Korean War and issued weak demands that North Korea suspend its nuclear program, all while kissing the ass of a man who starves and murders his people and gaining little in return. Today, North Korea possesses a nuclear arsenal capable of striking the United States, has shown it has little appetite for joining the fold of developing nations, and was granted legitimacy by the most powerful person on Earth for what amounts to basically nothing.  The summit gained the US and our allies in the Asia Pacific precious little while giving North Korea nearly everything it desired. Another diplomatic coup for our president. Thank you, sir.

A well-functioning administration would perhaps realize that they have been gifted a world in which a rhetorical and foreign policy approach that prioritizes freedom and democracy would allow it to press the advantage against the bevy of undemocratic regimes it considers its enemies. An appeal to Hong Kong that attempts to market it as a Berlin Wall, a symbol of oppression and freedom denied, could help turn the pressure up on China. So too would a forceful denunciation of fucking ethnic minority labor camps.

Or perhaps a policy that tries to use its authority over the Gulf nations to force positive change. Or maybe a commitment to European democracy and the values of free expression and inclusion. Or an attempt to leverage our strong military and diplomatic relationship with Israel to force it to make difficult concessions on the Palestinian cause, rather than roll over for a regime that has proven itself stubbornly unwilling to compromise despite our generosity.

Even in our own backyard there are things we could be doing to enhance the cause of freedom and inclusion. We could tell refugees fleeing oppression that they can come to the United States. We can peel away the best and brightest from other countries around the world so that the brilliant scientist from Iran or the entrepreneur from China is a student that we deprive those hostile regimes of profiting from. We could tell immigrants, some undocumented, who are here laboring on the frontlines against a once-in-a-lifetime human catastrophe that they deserve to be fast tracked for citizenship or legal status.

We could do so much that would help this country’s cause in a time of ceaseless threats to democracy. But we don’t. The rot at the heart of our government that makes Americans bristle with shame at their country, that makes the world look askance at us as it does our enemies, prevents us from doing any of this. Our leaders have forgotten the values we are supposed to uphold and represent. In the process we have grown far weaker while our foes and enemies of human rights and freedom around the world have grown far stronger.

Freedom is no longer something those in power, and even some Americans, understand. That loss of understanding has eroded our confidence in ourselves and has eroded the faith the world places in us. Freedom has become, to quote Jimmy Carter, “a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July.” A thing we claim to have but don’t truly understand anymore. This cannot be blamed all on the current administration, but its acceleration can be. And the losers from this immoral four years of American failure are not just Americans and our future dreams; they are the freedom seekers around the world who need a beacon more than ever. They are the ones who may pay more than anybody. That will be the price of four years of hate and division, of nativism and immorality.

That will be the price of Trump’s American Exceptionalism.